Ian the Baboon, Des the Knife and Ba the Ram are all characters in
this quarter's first-place choice: RICHARD H. WILKINSON's
excellent Reading Egyptian art: a hieroglyphic guide to ancient Egyptian
painting and sculpture (224 pages, 2-colour illustration throughout
1993. London: Thames & Hudson; ISBN 0-500-05064-3 hardback
|pounds~16.95), a unique, fascinating and attractive directory of the
100 signs used most often in Egyptian painting and sculpture; 24
sections on man, woman, anthropomorphic deities, parts of the human
body, mammals, birds, amphibians and reptiles, fishes and parts of
fishes, trees and plants, temple furniture and emblems, etc., contain
double-page spreads for individual word-motifs: pp. 70-71 is
'Hippopotamus' (this quarter's promotional beast since I
heard that their pygmy relatives were kebabed to extinction in
10th-millennium Cyprus; see flinty hippo in the picture). The icon
appears in the right-hand margin over its Egyptian name -- I'll
have to resist a smile next time I meet a dietarily-challenged Deb --
while the accompanying text tells that she was the manifestation of
disorder who eventually became associated with malevolent beings such as
Seth (pp. 66-7: Linnaean classification unclear: ?aardvark ?jackal,
?okapi, ?ass), but who had a good side as a stellar aspect of Isis, and
as a goddess of pregnancy; the facing page carries three carefully
chosen waterhorse images: a hippo-hunting scene from Saqqara
(part-symbolizing the preservation of order), a lotus-decorated faience model, and a head from Tut's wooden bed (the protective, rebirthing
function). Accessible and delightful -- a book that could easily gain
converts to Ancient Egypt.